What does Satan represent?

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You are contradicting yourself here. If disobeying god is sin, then evil was done BEFORE the fruit is eaten.



False. To an all knowing being, that is not taking risk, but a known failure.

When a good engineer constructs something he(or she) is very well aware of how it works and why it does what it does. When God constructed humans if He did not know how they would work He was not all knowing. There is nothing mysterious about how decisions are made. They are made out of reasoning how to get the expected results. The concept that many paths are equally attractive is total nonsense and if God is aware of what decisions are possible and is aware of the way a human works (to a depth that only an all knowing God can have) then he knows beforehand how things will go and the total responsibility for the results can only be His. His creatures are designed to behave in a particular way and He cannot wiggle out of that.

God created a perfect being in the human form. Of course God knew all possibilities of how that being could end up. For God to make a perfect being in His image with the capacity to choose good or evil, He had to give that perfect being a will of its own. The human will is a feature of a perfect being created in the image of God. Now, whether that being will make the choice to good or evil is a question only that being can answer. God could have started COMPLETELY over from scratch. But since God made human beings the right way the first time, there's no need to concede failure when there is none. Starting over from scratch would have been an admission of failure on God's part. To do so would have meant God is imperfect, and since God is NOT imperfect, an admission of failure when there is no failure would make God a liar. So which is it? Is God imperfect OR capable of sinning? Neither. God IS perfect and chooses good over evil. The most logical thing for God to do after His creation messed itself up is to implement a means of redemption for the fallen creation. A perfect God is a merciful God, thus God allows man to live.

Now, God DID come to recognize a point in time at which His runaway creation became too depraved to save. Noah and his family represent the last measure of goodness within God's creation. God showed mercy by allowing the fallen creation to continue through one person rather than depriving all future generations of the opportunity and blessing of life. Yet again, God displays His perfection when, for all practical purposes, God does start over with a clean slate (in a sense) without COMPLETELY annihilating human beings. God also made a covenant with His remnant that such a state of affairs would never be resolved through a worldwide flood. Say what you will about global warming/climate change and the melting of the ice caps, a complete deluge on a global scale will NEVER happen.

I'm not sure where the concept that "many paths are equally attractive," came from, but I agree that it is total nonsense. The only path that makes sense is the path which leads to the salvation of the human soul and an eternity in presence of God. An unfavorable consequence that we would want to avoid is the suffering of an eternity in emptiness. But regardless of what is attractive and what is not attractive, God none-the-less allows us to make that decision, even if He Himself finds that outcome unfavorable. To do otherwise would be to deprive us of the gift He gave us of making our own decisions, of choosing our own paths, which would make God not just a liar, but also unjust. God is good, not evil, so human free will stands.

God knows all possible decisions we will make, but again stepping in to make up our minds for us would be contradictory to the nature of God. It is WE who bear the burden of guilt due to those choices, not our Creator. God doesn't sin FOR us. Blaming God for what He didn't do is arrogant. It is also another sign of God's mercy. As I've said before, being born with the choice to love God or hate God means choosing a destiny of being in God's presence or beyond God's presence. An unrepentant sinner who meets God after death does not wish to know God. Being compelled to dwell in God's presence when one does not love God is just another kind of condemnation--you'll be unhappy regardless. Eternity in Hell, banished from God's presence, is the only merciful alternative. Now, an unrepentant, unsaved sinner who meets God after physical death and "changes his mind" is disingenuous by nature because the change is not brought about from actual repentance, but rather remorse. Anyone who has spent time with small children, especially stubborn ones, knows quite well the difference between turning away from aberrant behavior and remorse for simply having been caught in the behavior. God does not want eternal captives who are merely sorry they got caught, but rather eternally willing companions who understand and confess to being caught already. For the unrepentant sinner, the captivity is a trap he himself has set. For the redeemed, it is a net that rescues us from eternal consequences and brings us up to eternal blessing.

I believe that our "engineer" has designed us with acceptance of God in mind. But the choice is a willing choice, not forced upon us. God does not have to "wiggle out of" any responsibility. He is in charge of us and cares for us as He sees fit. So He is as much responsible as any good parent should be. But even the best parents, the ones who do EVERYTHING right, still somehow churn out the naughtiest of children. Is it something parent did wrong? No. The child has to grow up and accept responsibility for HIS own actions, no matter how much wrong decisions make the mother cry and the father angry. A child who leaves the home and begins his own life is responsible for those decisions he makes--breaking the law, harming other people, self-destructive behavior through chemical dependency, incurable sexual diseases, whatever. Parents don't WANT to let go, but in the end they have little choice if the child gives them none.

Strange, isn't it? God gave us all the choices in the world, and yet somehow we withhold the same privilege from God, to make choices for us, to become the kind of people He wants us to be. And that is fundamentally why free will is something I renounce for myself. If God is in control of my life, why should I feel that I should answer to any other authority? I lead a fairly peaceful existence despite having relatively little compared with my peers, and more often it is trouble that seeks me out rather than the other way around--usually trouble makers itching for a fight who somehow find me to be an easy target. As long as God keeps me in His will, no circumstance is great enough to fear.

Some of what the narrator in that video clip says makes sense (namely the exhortations to turn away from ritual, mantra, dogma, and institutional authority), but there's a definite paranoid bent to it, so I can't conclude he's achieved any state of enlightened spirituality that he's attributed to Jesus of Nazareth.

Human nature doesn't seem surpass their own nature to believe there is such a thing, but the assumption of that is useful.

You still do not grasp the very important sequence involved in decision making. To make a decision one must take into account the consequences of one's actions. Taking that into account requires the evaluations of each possible action. The overwhelming bulk of possibilities are unequal in the benefits assumed. The actual benefits are irrelevant since the decision to move in a decisive act is based on the understanding of the virtual act before any action takes place. For the "perfect" Adam to commit a sin indicates he was imperfect in choosing that action. The choice itself is critical and that choice is made upon his ability to comprehend consequences. That comprehension is based upon his very construction. To make the wrong choice means there was something wrong in his construction. And that defect was not his responsibility but God's who is assumed to not only be aware of all possibilities but also all outcomes. For a choice to be free indicates an ignorance of an outcome and an ignorance of that dimensions indicates a fault in construction. Something for which God must take responsibility. A perfect God is incapable of making mistakes and by that any of His creations are incapable of making mistakes since that perfection must run seamlessly through everything attributed to God. Thre is no way a God can escape the responsibility for the consequences of either His own acts or the acts of any of His creations.

I understand perfectly well. But you're still operating under the wrong assumption. You're assuming that Adam making the wrong choice was due to an innate imperfection with which he was created. This is not true. It is Adam's capacity for choice, whether making right choices or wrong choices, that enabled him to make the wrong choice at all. He could just as easily made the RIGHT choice. If God had made Adam WITHOUT that choice, then it would have shown God as cruel, not caring whether a being created in His image really wanted to make the right choices or not. Further, it would show God as not being able to trust in His own creation. Why should we trust God if God cannot trust us? Further, why should God make a being He cannot trust? Is God insecure in His creation?

The answer to that last question is absolutely not. Why SHOULD God be insecure? If God is a capable creator, He should have nothing to fear from His creation.

Adam, by contrast, COULD have avoided betraying that trust. Adam, as a perfect being, had the capacity, just as God does, of ONLY doing that which is good and avoiding evil. Adam made the choice to embrace evil in hopes of becoming better than God. The promise of the Tree, as told by the Serpent, was that they'd become equal with God. However, this isn't logically possible solely from eating from the Tree. The only possibility is to become BETTER than God. Though they were told they'd be equal or like God or gods, they ignored the truth: God had already made Himself equal with them. The only option, then is to become BETTER than God, and since nothing can possibly be ABOVE God, Adam and Eve made themselves arrogant people. Whether they INTENDED to do so is irrelevant. What happened, happened.

So God made a perfect being in His image with the power to make choices. That creation, of its own will and desire, made the wrong decision. A flaw is introduced into the perfect creation by the creation itself. Therefore, the once-perfect creation is made imperfect by it's own doing, not God's doing.

As I said before, God is responsible insofar as He cares and provides for His creation. Because He loves us unconditionally, regardless of the pre-conditions we fabricate on our own, He provides a means through which we may be redeemed and reconciled to Him--not of OUR doing, because we are sinful and imperfect and therefore incapable of doing anything to earn God's grace, but of God's own doing because of His love for us.

Further--such statements are predicated on human knowledge, wisdom, and logic being greater than that of God's. I've demonstrated in some ways why this cannot be. If you believe you have a better way to run the world, or rather some conviction that God's inaction is not enough or is a call to action for yourself to help others and alleviate suffering, by all means do so. It is perhaps your decisions that God desires to do His work.

So what if God knew Adam and Eve were going to rebel against Him? They had the choice to keep the singular commandment provided, but they didn't. God said the punishment for disobedience was death, but He had mercy on them and only banished them from the garden. In that choice Adam and Eve made, they decided the course of human events, and more instantly they decided how they would relate to God. If they had chosen to abstain from disobedience, things could have been a lot better, but as it is they didn't. God set up what was going to take place to redeem humankind in Genesis 3:15 and specified it further in Isaiah 53, and as such people have a choice as to whether they willingly accept or willingly reject the free redemption offered.

The concept of perfection is not malleable. It either is or it is not. That Adam could choose to become greater than God with the full knowledge that this is not possible (and he had to have that knowledge to be perfect) is an inherent imperfection created by God. There is no question that that choice was imperfect.

Do you have any idea what the word perfect means?

The CHOICE itself, yes. The ABILITY to choose one way or another, no. A perfect being created in the very image of God would HAVE to be able to make the choice, yes or no, up or down, right or wrong, good or evil.

Do you?

Adam was a perfect idiot because he listened to his naive wife with his dick rather than his brain and devotion to God, she must have been so smoking hot that he could not refuse to disobey God's censorship law.

OK. And would a perfect being be aware of the consequences of each of those choices?

Actually, Adam WAS aware of the consequences of the one wrong choice he made. The Bible informs us that God did reveal the penalty for sin was death. Adam had no excuse to sin.

So Adam willingly accepted the consequences of his act with a full knowledge of them as a perfect being. Or did that decision indicate an imperfection in God's creation of Adam which could only come about if God were imperfect.?